Hot Pursuit

Hasan Kahvecioğlu, journalist from Cyprus, spoke to Yavuz Baydar.

Turkey is never going to have a great relationship with the United States as long as Erdogan continues to behave in autocratic ways, Nicholas Danforth, a non-resident senior research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, ELIAMEP told Ahval paper’s editor-in-chief Yavuz Baydar in Ahval’s Hot Pursuit YouTube interview series on Tuesday. Baydar has interviewed Nicholas Danforth about the bilateral meeting on Monday between President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan following a meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels.

Even if Turkey manages to come up with a solution to the S400 issue or the eastern Mediterranean issue during the NATO meeting on June 14 between U.S President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, there is not going to be a new page within the U.S. Turkish relationship without real democracy and reforms, Merve Tahiroglu, the Turkey Program Coordinator at the Project on Middle East Democracy, told Ahval’s editor-in-chief in Ahval on Saturday. Tahiroglu said that Ankara really wants an image out of this meeting on Monday of positive U.S-Turkish relations.

Yavuz Baydar, Editor-in-Chief of Ahval, spoke with Kurdish scholar David Phillips.

Turkey's strongman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will try to use some "magic" to reset the relationship with U.S. President Joe Biden at their upcoming meeting in June. His “magic,” however, is unlikely to work at this time, Dr. Aykan Erdemir, senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD) in Washington D.C., told Hot Pursuit.

Erdemir said that the meeting between the leaders offers little chance to fix the structural problems in the relationship between the two countries.

Both countries have a number of serious issues to resolve. While the U.S. administration asks Turkey to remove the Russian-made S-400 air defence missile system from Turkish soil, Ankara wants Washington to stop Syrian Kurds who seem to be a threat to Turkey’s own national security.

The Biden administration will ask the Erdoğan government to improve on its human rights records and democratic standards while the Erdoğan government asks the U.S. government to lift sanctions on some of the weapons systems.

What is more, the bilateral meeting will be held under the shadow of the Belarus crisis, Erdemir added.

Diplomats have told Reuters, Ankara pushed for the scrapping of any mention of support for sanctions on Belarus and calls for the release of other political prisoners in Belarus after last week’s forced landing of a passenger plane and the subsequent arrest of a dissident journalist by Belarus.

There is one topic that has a chance for both leaders to make some progress and for Erdoğan to gain ground, and that is Afghanistan, Erdemir added.

Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, U.S. officials said previously, completing the military exit by the Sept. 11, 2021. Taliban attacks had drawn the United States into the region and its longest war. Turkey has presented itself as a key partner in Afghanistan and was set to host the peace talks between the Taliban and the U.S. government. However, the talk plans have collapsed.

Erdemir said that beyond some potential agreement with regards to Afghanistan, there appears to be no easy way to salvage the relationship.

The accusations levelled by the exiled mafia boss Sedat Peker regarding the Turkish deep state activities, political assassination of a Cypriot journalist and many other shocking revelations paint a very complicated picture for Turkey regarding its ruling coalition.

The series of video revelations by Peker indicate that the Turkish state apparatus has been overtaken by several crime rings and mafia bosses at the same time, Ahval editor-in-chief Yavuz Baydar said in his Hot Pursuit podcast on Thursday.

More than 100 million people, in Turkey and abroad, have locked eyes on the seven hour-long videos Peker released throughout May to understand both the current clash between the mob boss and Turkish interior minister Süleyman Soylu, and some of the past mysterious events Peker appears to be spilling beans on.

Baydar said that Soylu had been instrumental in recent years in a plot to rise within the party with the help of “certain people tied to the underground world” including ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy Tolga Ağar, whose father Mehmet Ağar served as both the chief of police and interior minister in previous governments.

Peker promised to set off further waves of political tsunami in a series of tweets on Wedneesday. The mobster’s allegations and threats seem to have rattled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government, as Peker starts to show signs that he could change direction and target the president directly.

'Mob boss Peker's videos show us the second side of the cartel state of Turkey' - Prof Hamit Bozarslan